The Spiritual World: On the Existence of Demons (17)

Ivan Nikolaevich Ponomarev

...continued from part sixteen.

15. In “Memories of the Polish Rebellion of 1863” by Mr. I. N. Ponomarev, in the September issue of the “Istorichesky Vestnik” for 1896, the author recounts the following inexplicable fact, which he himself witnessed, together with the officers of the Uhlan Regiment, where the author was released from the corps shortly before the start of the 1863 uprising.

The author tells us:

The third squadron, in which I was, was assigned to camp in the village of Kvitki, located ten miles from the headquarters that remained in the city of Korsun (Kiev province). The large village consisted of several hundred houses, and since in Little Russia almost every house has a garden, Kvitki, buried in greenery, occupied several miles in circumference. The quartermasters who met us announced that there were no comfortable apartments for the officers, and the only tolerable premises were allocated for the squadron commander, adding that there was a good private residence, but they did not dare to occupy it either.

The Spiritual World: On the Existence of Demons (16)

Yelets Monastery in Chernigov

...continued from part fifteen.

14 . Mysterious Phenomena in Chernigov in the 1840's*

The following took place in 1843 or 44 (I don’t remember exactly), in Chernigov, in the house of my uncle (on my aunt’s side), the priest Father John Gerasimovich Menailov.

Father John was known and revered in Chernigov as a priest of the strictest life, always ready to be there and with those to whom he was needed; he was considered a saint.

At the same time, I was in the district theological school and was a singer in the Yelets singing choir (the rector’s choir of the seminary), which lived in the Yelets Monastery in Chernigov.

As a nephew of Mother Menailova, I went to them every Sunday and feast day and spent the whole day with them until evening. The Menailov family consisted of a husband, wife, two sons, two daughters, and a niece, my cousin, Anna Emelianovna Kornukh, who lived with them temporarily. There was one servant, a tall, healthy girl, not in her first youth, a local native.